


For 10 Points...

by schneefusslanti



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:48:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8974792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schneefusslanti/pseuds/schneefusslanti
Summary: A high school Quiz Bowl coach dies and his team behind, watching his team fail from the afterlife.One incorrect answer too many leads him to find a way to teach from the other side.He just needs someone to spread the information around.Or: What if something else influenced Lin-Manuel Miranda to pick up the Hamilton biography at the airport?





	1. Chapter 1

Andrew Smith sat up, still feeling groggy as if he’d just woken up from the deepest sleep. 

_Just woken up. But then last time-_

Smith panicked, scanning his surroundings. Last time he was awake he remembered the bright lights. The clang of the medical equipment. The doctors frantically trying to keep his blood pressure up. The heart monitor gradually slowing down. The sound gradually fading out. The car that swerved on the icy road that he couldn’t avoid because a truck suddenly drove up the ramp when he needed to move into the right lane.

_Shite I’m-_

His thought was cut short by a knock on the door, which Smith stood up to answer. The man behind the door looked somewhat familiar, as if he’d seen a picture of him either in one of his textbooks or social media or something. 

“Hi, my name is Aaron. And you are…” The second man looked at his paper, “Andrew Smith. Welcome to room 17A. If you had any suspicions you’re currently in the afterlife-”

_-dead.  
That car accident did happen. And now I’m dead. It’s probably been a day and my body’s sitting in the freezer while my family decides whether it’s going in a box or in a fancy coffee can and I won’t be able to go to another Quiz Bowl meet and-_

As if Aaron could hear the first man’s mind spinning, he cut his welcome-to-the-afterlife script short. 

“Do you need to sit down? You look a little tired.”

“No, I’m just overwhelmed with everything since you confirmed I’m dead.” 

“Well I’m in 17C if you need me; here’s the basic information to what’s going on,” he said, handing Smith the sheet of paper.

“Thanks- Hang on, you said your name was Aaron?” asked Smith, glancing over the information.

“Yes, why?”

Smith looked up again. “You look familiar. Like I’ve seen you somewhere, like in my history textbook or in a Quiz Bowl packet or… I mean, think I know who you are but I don’t remember.”

“Give me your information sheet.” 

Pulling a pen out of his jacket pocket, Aaron scribbled a line before handing the sheet back to Smith. 

“Pretty sure you should know now,” Aaron said, walking away from the door. 

He looked at the piece of paper again after sitting down on the couch, at the line of blue ink at the bottom of the page. 

“For 10 points, name the third Vice President of the United States.” 

Smith picked up a pen on the table and clicked it as if it were a buzzer. 

“Aaron Burr.”  
__

The next few days were spent getting used to new living arrangements. As he was now living in the afterlife, there was no need for him pay rent; food and sleep were now optional, and there was no need for work anymore. While Smith did miss his kids at school, there was one thing that he didn’t miss, and that was grading assignments. No more staying up late, rolling his eyes and face-palming at cringe-worthy World Geography papers where students didn’t read the prompt and mistook Sweden for Slovakia. No more confused faces from students attempting to find articles about the war in Ossetia in the US news section. No more people believing that Kazakhstan actually exported potassium. 

But frustrated teacher mode aside, living in 17A meant missing out on coaching the next Quiz Bowl season. Not that it was going to be great; in fact, it was pretty likely to be far from it. Finding a new classroom and teacher to head the club wasn’t a problem; his colleague Tim Johnsen could cover for him, and all he really needed to do was organize paperwork, have the practice packets out, and make sure no one broke a window during club meetings. Unfortunately, all the members of his varsity team had graduated and moved on to university, and their successors were going to have a hard time repeating their legacy. Smith could already see the title of the article the school newspaper would write, tucked in the page farthest away from the sports headline: Success of School Quiz Bowl Team Dies with Mr. Smith. 

_Well you can’t do anything anymore, Drew. You’re stuck here and the most you can do is go to pub trivia with a bunch of other dead guys and try not to fangirl over everyone that you read about in a textbook. All you can do is watch Johnsen and the new team getting itchy fingers and power-answering Bob Dole for every question they don’t know the answer and lose -30 to 415. And that’s going to-_

Once again his thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. And by the same person as well. 

“Hi Andrew, are you having problems with your TV right now?” asked Burr, “I called Tesla and Farnsworth to come look at the issue since at least half the floor’s got the same problem.”

“Not that I know of; let me check.”

Smith dug out the TV remote out of the couch and turned it on, switching channels until he got to what would be his district’s local (would it still be local in the afterlife?) channel, where his school’s bowl team was competing against another school. 

“Nope, it’s working fine. Do you want to stay and watch, since yours isn’t working?”

Burr glanced at the TV screen. “Why not? Tesla and Farnsworth aren’t going to arrive for a few hours.”

_Johnsen, you’d never guess what I’m doing up here. I’m watching our (or should I now say your, now that you’re leading alone) team fail with flying colors with Aaron Burr right now. Good luck; you’re going to need it. And please, don’t Bob Dole another question unless it’s a bounceback that you don’t know and have nothing to lose on. Please._  
__

Johnsen’s Quiz Bowl team didn’t disappoint. 

And by disappoint, Smith meant perform as expected: Not buzzing in early enough and letting the opponent team steal the question, someone clicking the buzzer and not having an answer, answering Bob Dole on power, and deciding that “Dr. Octagonapus” was a valid answer for “Who won the NHL Championships in 2004?” 

“The kilogram is an example of one of seven SI base units,” droned the moderator, “For five points each, name the other six.”

Five of their six answers were mass units. Thankfully one person on the team had the sense to say meters. 

“Oh my gosh, thank you Amanda for actually saying something that makes sense!” yelled Smith, forgetting that Burr was sitting next to him on the couch.

“No, Jim, Asus is not the genus name for maple trees!”

“It’s Allegra you... don’t you remember that Fexofenadine is ‘foxy fine lady with allergies?’”

Burr turned around from the TV and faced Smith. “You seem really into this,” he commented dryly. 

“Yeah, it’s hard seeing your team fall apart like this after taking them to nationals last year.”

On the screen, the moderator read out another toss-up.

“This man’s character was voiced by Andrew Rannells in the PBS Kids show Liberty’s Kids. Born in Nevis in 1755, this man served in the Revolutionary war as one of George Washington’s aide-de-camps for four years, later serving as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, authoring 51 of the anonymously published Federalist Papers. For ten points, give the name of the first Secretary of the Treasury who died in an 1804 duel with Aaron Burr.”

Jim buzzed in. 

“Thomas Jefferson.”

The two men on the couch turned around and looked at each other.

“Are. You. Kidding. Me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used to do Quiz Bowl in high school and really miss it.  
> and yes, we used to answer Bob Dole on questions that we didn't know the real answer to. Surprisingly enough, the answer to one question was actually Bob Dole...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of dialogue with Burr and Smith sitting on the couch.  
> Smith finds out there might be a way to communicate with the still-living from the afterlife.

Not surprisingly, the other team won. They might have been a bit slower at hitting the buzzer, but they managed to get all the bounce back questions along with the bonuses. 

Johnsen’s team ended up with a measly 25 points, all from miraculously stealing bonuses (5 from Amanda correctly answering “meters” as an SI unit, and 20 from Jim somehow knowing that Serbia broke up with Montenegro in 2006 and won Eurovision debuting as an independent country the year after). 

“I am so sorry you had to watch that,” apologized Smith nervously, switching off the TV, “I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t imagine it to be like that.”

“Should I say I kind of expected it?” replied Burr, “Out of the last 200 people that moved into this building, you’re probably the only person that slightly recognized me. In fact, I’m surprised you even decided to stay on Floor 17 with all of us.” 

“Well, I was considering it when someone was yelling ‘I GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS ALL SITTING IN A ROW’ while drunk a few days ago-”

“That was not me, and I did not spend $40 on it-”

Smith raised his eyebrows at the other man. “It was either your place or 17B, and unless 17B’s face comes off the $10 bill it was coming from your place.”

“Right, and I did not shoot him,” retorted Burr, “I mean, I can’t do anything now that we’re both dead except call Tesla to shut his power off every few weeks, not that it’s going to do anything. We all know he’s just going to start ghostwriting another novel that ends up on earth again.”

“Like that Twilight book?” asked Smith. “A couple of my kids were obsessed with it- OH MY GOSH HE DID NOT WRITE TWILIGHT-”

“No, more like-”

_Wait did he say he managed to get stuff down to earth? What if I did something like that so…I don’t know but there might be a 0.0000001% chance that Johnsen gets his hands on it and manages to get the team back on its feet and not look like a joke again in a few years. I mean but HOW do you do that???_

“Hang on, did you say he ghostwrote stuff on earth? How do you do that? Maybe I can do something to get Johnsen and the kids to actually know their stuff…”

“You’re going to have to ask him yourself,” answered Burr, looking at his watch. “I have to go anyways, Farnsworth’s probably here already.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short update, I'm supposed to be writing application essays and did this instead!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smith goes to pub trivia.

Pub trivia in the afterlife was just like pub trivia on Earth. Drinks? Check. Buzzers? Check. People yelling random answers and dancing around in their seats struggling to find the answer caught on the tips of their tongues? Check.

Except this time Smith had a lot more competition. Given all the people in the pub that had died before him, it was pretty unlikely for him to score points on questions related to American history. Not exactly fair on NAQT standards, but there wasn’t anything he could do. He still had the edge whenever the moderator read something about 2007 or something in the past few years anyways. The same went with geography; Smith was still certain that he would be able to identify Latvia before the question mentioned anything about Louis Sachar’s Holes. Biology, maybe not. Not if the person sitting next to him kept getting all the turtle-related questions, whether soft-shelled, painted, box, or even the variety involving chocolate, caramel, and nuts.

“Tossup number 13,” read the moderator, “This novel was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of 2005, in which an apple representing the forbidden fruit is portrayed on the cover. 17-year-old Bella Swan moves to---“

The question was interrupted by a sharp buzzer tone.

_You got the power? Damn it, you got it just a millisecond before I was going to hit it…_

“May I have your answer?” Smith turned to look at the man who buzzed in before him. Unlike Burr, who he only vaguely recognized from a textbook image, this person was definitely familiar. He’d spent enough $10 bills at the grocery store to recognize him.

_Hamilton? How do you know this? Or maybe you hit it by accident. It’s from 2005, you’re going to get it wrong._

“Twilight.”

_HOW THE--- WHAT?!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I guess I'm back??

“How the _hell_ did you know Twilight when it’s… 200 years after you died?” sputtered Smith, after he managed to confront Hamilton (yes he *vaguely* looked like his ten dollar bill portrait but the last thing he’d imagined was the guy in front of him answering correctly on power and chugging the remainder of his pint like at bar trivia. Then again, this wasn’t exactly earth). Everyone else (at least, everyone from floor 17/18) had already left the pub _and_ they’d run out of cider for the day.

“Because I wrote it, no shit,” responded Hamilton calmly, “I thought Burr told you.”

For a split second Smith didn’t know how to react. For starters, the writer of 51 of the Federalist Papers (and probably the bane of that one US history class in uni) was talking to him. And then _he_ –

“Kidding, I didn’t. You’re that history teacher on my floor along, only 21st century death on floor 17.”

“Uhh yes? But Twilight?”

_I would have asked for your autograph to show Johnsen but I’m currently dead and can’t do anything, so what am I going to do. Might as well just keep talking…_

Hamilton rolled his eyes. “Don’t know who started it, but someone on floor 20 tried to spread a conspiracy theory that I wrote 489 pages of sparkly vampire content and slapped a fake name on it. Probably got to Burr who decided to tell everyone on our floor a few weeks back. Yeah we get along but that doesn’t mean we’re best friends up here.”

“No surprise there…”

**Author's Note:**

> I used to do Quiz Bowl in high school and really miss it.  
> and yes, we used to answer Bob Dole on questions that we didn't know the real answer to. Surprisingly enough, the answer to one question was actually Bob Dole...


End file.
